Monday Morning Update 10/28/24

Top News

UnitedHealth Group’s HHS OCR breach notice filing indicates that the information of 100 million Americans was exposed in Change Healthcare’s February 2024 ransomware attach.

The company had previously said only that the cyberattack had affected “a substantial proportion of people in America.”

Reader Comments

From Granular Argument: “Re: long-time Cerner customer Children’s National. Doing demos of Oracle Health and Epic.” Verified, assuming that the graphic the reader sent is legit.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents reported limited negative HR experience in the past couple of years, although with some dealt with RTO conflicts and layoffs.

New poll to your right or here: Is employer-paid attendance of the HLTH conference beneficial to patients and healthcare in general? I will disclose my bias, having never attended, that it seems to focus on socializing, being entertained, and sharing air with celebrities that include high-profile CEOs who are mostly selling themselves and their companies, all with the goal of coming back home “energized” having run up the expense account for questionable quantifiable benefit. Ironically, all of this took place smoky casinos, which surround attendees with just about every known health risk. I suppose the real question is the value of the strong networking component of any conference, other than companies seeking customers or health system attendees seeking jobs. I doubt that the life of a dying cancer patient would be enriched by the knowledge that their medical costs funded an IT person’s attendance at a concert by frequent incarceree Busta Rhymes.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

WellSky acquires Bonafide, which offers solutions for durable medical equipment and home medical equipment.

Hospital quality reporting platform vendor Pharos closes a $5 million seed funding round.

An Nvidia blog post says that the company is working with Deloitte to create digital health AI agents, which it refers to as “customizable digital humans.” The Ottawa Hospital is using an agent that it calls Digital Teammate to answer surgery patient questions about procedure preparation and post-op recovery.

Sales

• Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust will implement Sectra One Cloud.

Announcements and Implementations

Researchers find that AI-powered transcription, including ambient clinical documentation, contains a surprising number of errors and hallucinations even when the source conversation is short and clear. Research is also limited because the medical transcription products erase the audio recording immediately, leaving the AI-generated text version as the only artifact. Everybody involved urges doctors to review the AI draft carefully, which of course some won’t because it is “usually” OK.

A YouTube blog post says that Cleveland Clinic is testing new AI tools for easily publishing authoritative videos. The clinic’s digital marketing director says they are using the tools to recommend topic ideas by searching YouTube and the web and to suggest interview questions.

Sponsor Updates

• Alpha II’s RCxRules will exhibit at NextGen Healthcare UGM October 27-30 in Nashville.
• Vyne Medical publishes a new case study, “How Hurley Medical Center Expanded Services to Increase Access to Care.”
• Alpha II, Artera, Crossings Healthcare Solutions, Ellkay, FinThrive, Fortified Health Security, Healthcare IT Leaders, Impact Advisors, Nordic, and Surescripts will exhibit at the Oracle Health Summit October 28-30 in Nashville.
• Notable announces the 2024 Notable Impact award winners in six categories.
• Net Health adds Tali’s AI assistant and ambient clinical documentation capabilities to its Optima, ReDoc, TherapySource, and WoundExpert EHRs.
• UiPath honors customer AGS Health with a UiPath A125 Award for its innovative use of fax automation and AI.
• FinThrive achieves claims management certification for oracle health patient accounting.
• Guam Regional Medical City implements PerfectServe’s care team communications software.
• TruBridge  Senior Director of Revenue Cycle Solutions Laura Osborne joins the HFMA Voices in Healthcare Podcast episode “Lessons from Tribal Health.”
• Waystar publishes a new case study, “AnMed Health’s Way Forward.”
• A Black Book Research survey of 4,000 healthcare organizations and 2,500 coding professionals highlights leading HIM and coding vendors, including the following HIStalk sponsors: Redox (clinical data integration and interoperability solutions, Alpha II ( computer-assisted coding applications), Verato (enterprise patient master index and clean-up),  Wolters Kluwer Health (clinical surveillance and compliance applications), and Nuance (medical speech-recognition solutions.)

Blog Posts

• IT Networks and their Undeniable Impact on Patient Experience and the Bottom Line (CereCore)
• Under the Hood: Key Insights from Notable’s Technology Leaders (Notable)
• Implementing a Healthcare Workforce Management System: 5 Common Challenges and Practical Solutions | Part 4 (QGenda)
• LPN vs LVN: What’s the Difference? (SnapCare)
• Solving Some of Physicians’ Major Pain Points with Patient Engagement Technology (TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company)
• 3 Ways Medication History for Reconciliation is Making Prescribing Safer (Surescripts)

Health Data Movers at the CHIME Fall Forum

HDM will facilitate a focus group titled “Unlocking M&A Success: Merging Systems for Seamless Integration and Maximum Impact” with Curtis Cole, MD, chief global information officer at Cornell University; Doug Turner, MBA, VP of enterprise applications at UCI Health; and Mehul Malhotra, delivery director at Health Data Movers on Monday, November 4 at 2:30 p.m. We will also be hosting a Taco Tuesday event following the sessions on November 5- RSVP here.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.